Kickstart: Trying to bring harmony to plastics policy decisions

Plastics are at the center of a lot of public policy discussions right now, at levels ranging from city halls to the United Nations. With all that attention, it's clear that new regulations are on the way for the plastics industry.

While industry lobbying groups want to have input into just what those new rules will cover, many of them also want to make sure that whatever happens will be consistent.

PN's Steve Toloken writes that at a recent event held during the United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York, members of the Business Coalition for a Global Plastics Treaty stressed the need for harmonized worldwide goals to speed packaging transition.

"We need ambitious global measures that are legally binding to level the playing field and enable us to move faster, so that we can redesign our products, so that we can redesign our packaging, faster," said Allison Lin, global vice president of packaging sustainability at Mars Inc. who represented the coalition. Lin also is a former executive with Westfall Technik Inc., a molder and mold maker, so she's aware of the ripple effect to individual companies, not just global conglomerates.

"We want harmonized regulations because it's very inefficient the way we're doing things," Lin added. "It's very expensive to adhere to multiple EPR systems."

Even for companies embracing sustainability, recycled material isn't always the perfect solution. Consider Lego, which has decided that using recycled PET for its bricks just doesn't make sense.

The Danish toymaker said in 2021 that it was testing the potential for recycled PET, but now it has decided it won't move into production.

"In order to scale production [of recycled PET], the level of disruption to the manufacturing environment was such that we needed to change everything in our factories," Tim Brooks, Lego's head of sustainability, told the Financial Times in a Sept. 24 report. "After all that, the carbon footprint would have been higher. It was disappointing."

The company will instead focus on making the ABS it uses more sustainable through bio-based and recycled material. It also will roll out a reuse program in the next few years.

But you know what's not normally expected to be labeled a single-use product during sustainability discussion? Running shoes.

Yet Adidas' newest competition running shoe, the Adizero Adios Pro Evo 1, is designed for "one race — so one marathon — plus familiarization time," Charlotte Heidmann, senior global product manager at Adidas, told Runners World.

They will retail at more than $500.

Ethiopia's Tigist Assefa wore the new Adizero Adios on Sept. 24 as she set a new women's marathon record in Berlin, slashing more than two minutes off the previous record.

The shoes are 40 percent lighter than other racing "supershoes," weighing only 138 grams, or 4.8 ounces. That's an ounce lighter than a honeycrisp apple for comparison.

Adidas says it used a new version of its Lightstrike-brand polyurethane foam and developed a new rubber outsole that eliminates treads while maintaining grip.